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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good book, but has lots of errors, February 4, 2009
This review is from: Illustrator CS4 Digital Classroom, (Book and Video Training) (Paperback)
Prior to buying this particular book, I had the pleasure to use another book in the same series, Adobe Photoshop CS4 Digital Classroom and I was very impressed with it. This is the reason why I looked after this book and I waited until it finally was available for sale. Well, from the get go I was quite disappointed because the book has some glaring typographical and proofreading errors, which made following the instructions in the book even more confusing. I e-mailed to the editors some of the errors I found and, in turn, they e-mailed me back a list of other errors, this time they were errors in the actual steps on how to use a certain tool or how to apply a certain effect.
The videos in the enclosed DVD are just as good as the ones for the Photoshop book, instructional and well-explained, this is the only reason I'm giving this book a rating of 3 stars, otherwise I would give it 2 or even 1. An instruction book should be error-proof to make less stressful the learning process.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Aimed at the computer-savvy, February 4, 2009
This review is from: Illustrator CS4 Digital Classroom, (Book and Video Training) (Paperback)
I received the book today and just started working through the first lesson. What struck me about the approach is that the authors presume a LOT of knowledge about the terminology (e.g., stroke, fill, symbol, etc.) that folks who have never worked with Illustrator would not have.
If you're computer-savvy, that's okay because the authors give enough context for you to quickly figure out what those terms mean and how to apply what they teach you broadly. If you are not computer-savvy (most people over 40 won't; I'm 41, but I started programming when I was 12), then you will probably feel lost.
If you're computer-savvy, this book is a 5. If you're not, it is probably a 3, if not lower (depending on skill/comfort level; there are a lot of gaps that you need to fill). I recommend anybody who is a total newbie to preview the book at your local bookstore before buying.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of errors and not a good book, May 8, 2009
This review is from: Illustrator CS4 Digital Classroom, (Book and Video Training) (Paperback)
This book was extremely disappointing, for starters the lesson files wouldn't allow me to save them as work files which is annoying. The problems became more than just annoying when the DVD only addressed a small segment of the books chapters and lessons, I purchased this book because I was unfamiliar with Illustrators Tracing feature. The book covers the Tracing tools midway into chapter five, but the DVD only deals with the first lesson of chapter five.
If this were an isolated incident I would dismiss it as an oversight but I also purchased InDesign CS4 from this publisher and none of the lesson files matched the working copy of Adobes Indesign CS4, you had to go to their (Wiley's Digital Classroom) website and download the corrected files, this was only discovered by emailing the author. At least they had the corrected lesson files. The Illustrator CS4 book has no such saving grace. When I called customer service tech support It was suggested to me that the next edition of the book would be more thorough or perhaps my copy of Illustrator had problems. This latest snafu proves to me that this publishers classroom series isn't ready for primetime.
For $30 or $40 I expected more, instead I got less.Stay away from this series. I have to give it one star in order to submit this review
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